


Trying Not To Fall

by juiceboxjellyfish



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Forbidden Love, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Light Angst, Longing, M/M, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Pining, Realization, Scene: Church in London 1941 (Good Omens), Yearning, and then I didn't proofread it, between 3 and 6 am, so sorry if there are spelling mistakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 11:22:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20063200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juiceboxjellyfish/pseuds/juiceboxjellyfish
Summary: London, 1941.Crowley has just saved Aziraphale (and his books) from nazis, and Aziraphale, in awe of the demon's selflessness, can no longer repress certain feelings.





	Trying Not To Fall

As the church crumbles around us, I can’t help but think it’s a shame to destroy such a building. Of course I’m biased as an angel, but I’ve always found churches rather lovely, at least old ones like this. A voice in the back of my head tells me I should mourn the lost lives more than the building but they were nazis, for heaven’s sake! Keeping them alive would only have resulted in more deaths, and killing them kept both me and Crowley alive and in our bodies.   
“That was really kind of you”, I admit. Crowley frowns.  
“Shut up”, he responds dismissively.  
“Well, it was”, I state, and then it hits me.   
“Oh, the books! I forgot all the books! They’ll all be blown to-“  
I’m interrupted by Crowley grunting slightly as he pulls the book bag from the hand of a dead nazi.   
“Little demonic miracle of my own”, he says. He hands me the bag, and his hand brushes against mine when I take it. “Lift home?”

It’s like someone’s struck a match in my chest. The feeling is hot and sudden and almost painful and it’s so strong I’m surprised I'm not actually glowing. Crowley’s already walking to the car, but I’m paralysed. He walked in to that church, onto consecrated ground, knowing a bomb was about to hit. He made the bomb hit. He trusted me to save his life, but he was still willing to risk it. A little demonic miracle of my own. He couldn’t save himself, he couldn’t even be sure he’d live, and yet he saved the books. For me. There’s the glowing again, starting at the very center of my heart and spreading within my ribcage. It expands until my body feels bigger on the inside. Bigger, and lighter, and full of golden light. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before—except it isn’t. 

The moment I tell myself I’ve never felt this before, I know it isn’t true. I’ve been feeling it for a long time without noticing or even giving myself a chance to notice. I don’t have to ask myself how long to know that it’s been centuries, and now that I’ve acknowledged it I can’t go back to ignoring it, which means I have to think about what it means. I’ve opened a door I can’t close and now I’ve got to deal with what escaped through it. 

I can still feel an echo of the contact Crowley’s hand made with mine and I notice that I’m staring at him as he moves away from me, seemingly in slow motion. It’s him, it always has been. Fuck. My heart stops glowing and starts a hasty descent through my body and into an eternal void. My lungs are robbed of air, making me dizzy. It can’t be Crowley, it just can’t! And yet it is. That feeling, the glowing, is him. It’s France, it’s Rome, it’s Golgotha, it’s Eden, it’s him. 

Even now that the feeling has been acknowledged I can’t even bring myself to think it. There’s a word and I know what it is, but maybe if I don’t think it, it won’t be true. Maybe if I don’t think it, it’ll go away. (It won’t. I’ve spend the last few thousands of years not thinking it and that hasn’t gotten me anywhere.) It shouldn’t be in the first place. I am an angel, and he is a demon! 

He was an angel once. Maybe we’re not that different. We used to be the same.   
He was an angel once. Even then, it wouldn’t have been okay. These feelings aren’t for angels, they’re for humans. And they’re definitely not for demons, I doubt demons can even feel them. 

He was an angel once.

Was.

I don’t know why he fell. He says he didn’t, not really. He says he never meant to fall, that he just hung around the wrong people, asked the wrong questions. I don’t know what he asked, but what question could be worse than this? If you can fall for hanging around the wrong people, acting on these feelings would surely doom me. Considering it at all, or even just having them to begin with, might be enough. Hanging around the wrong people. Crowley certainly isn’t the right people, but is he bad enough to be wrong? He did just risk his life to save the life of an angel. No, that doesn’t make him any less of a demon. He caused the original sin, for heaven’s sake! He’s definitely the wrong people. 

An angel and a demon. It’s unlikely, unrealistic, unheard of, and yet… Haven’t we had some sort of relationship since Eden? Aren’t we already friends? That’s what he calls us, but I don’t know if I even believe that demons can have friends. It’s not that I think of Crowley as heartless or cruel —I clearly care for him— I just doubt that it’s in his nature as a demon to feel the things I do. Though I suppose one wouldn’t really classify my feelings as friendly either. Despite already having had it several times, the thought that I could be banished for this hits me like a bucket of ice water.

I imagine it for a moment, falling for him, metaphorically and literally. Just the thought of falling hurts far too much for the fantasy to be at all tempting, but imagining the things we could have if I wasn’t bound by heaven and he wasn’t incapable of returning my feelings ignites the glow in my chest again. I note that imagining them isn't enough to make me fall, but I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff. 

I’m still gazing at Crowley and he’s still walking towards his car, using his hips in a way I’m fairly sure no human ever has. I wonder if his feet still hurt from the church floor and if there’s anything I could do about it or if angelic miracles would only make it worse. Mere seconds have passed but my whole world is different now, despite nothing actually changing. My feelings have been the same for as long as we’ve known each other but now that I know about them, they’re dangerous. And they hurt.

“Angel”, Crowley calls from the car, and the glowing I can’t allow myself to name swells in my chest. I imagine feelings and confessions and intimacy and defiance and falling, and I take a step closer to the edge.   
“Coming, dear.”

**Author's Note:**

> Would you look at that, I'm not dead!  
Sorry for disappearing for a year and a half but I just didn't have any motivation to write and when you stop doing it regularly you kinda forget... anyway I'm obsessed with Good Omens at the moment and had this idea in the middle of the night while watching sad edits so I used the motivation and lack of impulse control to get out of my slump, I hope y'all liked it!
> 
> If you're following me for snowbaz and are disappointed to see me come back with a Good Omens fic, don't worry! I'm working on a snowbaz fic as well, and it might even be my longest one yet! I don't know when it'll be done but it's on its way, so stay tuned for that!
> 
> Meanwhile, please do tell me your thoughts on this in the comments! Even when I've been gone, I've been checking the comments regularly, and every time I see a particularly nice one I feel a rush of motivation to write again. Okay, that's enough rambling. It's almost 7 AM now, I should post this and go to sleep.


End file.
